Political commentary from the LA Times

OK, here's what's going to happen in the messy Democratic presidential race: Neither one of your favorites is going to win. They're gonna tear each other apart to no successful end.

It'll stay stalled into the convention in late August, while John McCain and Condi Rice raise money and get the Republicans united and organized.

In Denver, the Democratic superdelegates, like the unelected elites they are, will gather in great worry, maybe after an inconclusive first round of general balloting.

And these big names will pick not the best candidate nor the one with the most delegates or, actually, any delegates or any popular votes.

To solve this self-destructive stalemate, they'll pick someone who denies even being a candidate, the least-worst candidate, somebody hardly anyone can really object to, except the Clintons.

They'll pick one of their own superdelegates, Al Gore, Mr. Party Elder, Mr. Nobel Prize, Mr. I-Got-Screwed-Out-of-Victory-Last-Time and Mr. Trust-Me-the-Globe-Really-Is-Round-and-Warming and I'm finally gonna get a chance to do something about it from the White House. The Draft Gore folks will be ecstatic and the Democratic blogosphere is already excited.

To keep the Obama zealots in the tent, Gore in turn will pick Barack Obama as his vice presidential running mate with the silent understanding that Big Al will ....

bow out after one term and the then-51-year-old, totally experienced Illinois guy can inherit the wind, while Al gets back to his lectures and slide shows for even larger fees as an ex-president.

Hey, it's not any stranger than all the other things that are happening this cycle. And it saves Gore all the expense, travel, fatigue, fundraising, phony handshakes and hassle of actually competing in primaries. Let's hear your scenarios below.

Sure, Gore had his own Bosnia sniper moments by inventing the Internet and everything else Ben Franklin didn't patent. But Hillary Clinton can go back to the Senate's sniping and shove Harry Reid out of the way as majority leader.

Until all that happens -- remember, you read it here first -- Gore, the Democrat's ill-fated nominee for president in 2000 who won the popular vote but lost the balloting that counts in the electoral college, is now contending that global warming doubters remind him of those who think the moon landing was fake or the world is as flat as it looks on a map.

This is the sort of stuff you'll hear this Sunday evening when the 2000 loser appears on "60 Minutes." Gore, who's on the other flat side of the Earth at a climate conference in India this week, says he'll give the profits from his book and film, "An Inconvenient Truth," to support a $300-million global advertising campaign to boost awareness of global warming.

Gore, who waffled a long while about another run at the White House and then repeatedly ruled it out, which we don't believe, still answers the perennial question as the current campaign drags on over minimal policy disagreements.

To try to make some news, the "60 Minutes" reporter tells Gore that some prominent people, including the man who succeeded him as vice president, remain unconvinced that global warming is man-made.

Gore replies: “You’re talking about Dick Cheney. I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat. That demeans them a little bit, but it’s not that far off.''

Some of the ads that Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection will air will feature an ecumenical odd couple, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Pat Robertson, as well as odd political bedfellows Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, and a pairing of singers who flank both sides of the country music dial, Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks.

-- Andrew Malcolm and Mark Silva

Mark Silva writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau.